Love at First Bight

Chapter Six

Emi’s eyes popped open what seemed like minutes after falling asleep. Without an outside window to gauge the sun’s position it was hard for her to figure out what time it was.

A man lay tightly spooned against her, one arm around her waist, the other cradling her head. Closing her eyes again, she settled her mind, reached out, and without looking sensed it was Aaron.

Eventually, she knew, she’d be able to tell each man apart from just the feel of his body or his scent. For now, her nose was stuffy or something, without clear scents or tastes.

“You awake?” he asked, his voice still gruff from sleep.

“Yeah.” She rolled over and realized they were in bed alone together. He captured her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, bringing it to his lips and kissing it.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked.

She smiled. “Like a rock.” Which was unusual, because normally she awoke at the slightest noise and couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept through a night without waking several times. Not since before her parents died…

No. Not now. She pushed the thought back and slammed the door shut on it.

“Where’s the twins?” she asked. It felt natural and right to call the two mismatched men that.

“They’re scrambling to tidy up the galley. They want to cook you breakfast.”

“Is that safe?”

He laughed. “Yes. They’re good cooks.”

“I’ll send Graymard a message in a few minutes. I don’t want to move right now.”

“We didn’t hurt you last night, did we?”

“No. Pain is not what I would think of when I try to describe last night.”

She shifted position again. Actually, she should be pleasantly sore but wasn’t even slightly achy. Not that she was complaining. It was yet another reason to join them.

“Even if it wasn’t for the chips we’d never hurt you, you know that, right? If you ever wanted to say stop¯” She lightly touched a finger to his lips. He was especially vulnerable right now with just the two of them, a side the other men rarely saw, she suspected. “I know. I trust you.” He sucked her finger into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it, igniting a pleasant flurry of contractions in her lower belly. “How did we get so lucky?” he whispered.

“You needed the right woman who could handle you guys.” She smiled, but it was wistful. “What am I going to do when the five years is up is the question. How could I ever¯” She was interrupted by the sound of Caph walking into the room.

“Hey, Ford! She’s awake!” His beautiful, beaming smile nearly broke her heart. These poor guys had really taken an emotional beating throughout the selection process.

He knelt on the bed next to Emi and kissed her. “How’d you sleep, beautiful?”

Ford quickly jogged in, his blue eyes gleaming. “Sleeping Beauty awakes, and Cap’s hogging her. I can already see how this is going to work.” But his voice was filled with amused teasing, not jealousy. He also leaned over, kissing her.

The twins were dressed in T-shirts and loose shorts, but she felt Aaron’s bare flesh warm against her body. “Anyone want to show me to the shower?” she asked.

She never knew men could strip that quickly. They told her the bathroom was technically called a “head” on a ship, her first lesson of many, she sensed. They had a large combo shower unit that delivered real water or sonic-air showers as desired. They showed her how to use it, opting for the luxury of a water shower since they were in dry dock, and enjoyed helping her clean up. All three cocks were stiff and throbbing by the time they climbed out, dried by the air cycle.

“You guys are going to keep me pretty busy, aren’t you?” Aaron stepped back and let the twins press close, holding her.

“You’d better believe it,” Ford said.

“Yeah,” Caph agreed. “I couldn’t believe you were still here this morning.”

“Someone help me find my phone. I’ll call Graymard and give him the happy news.”

The twins bolted, naked, out the door to comply.

Emi couldn’t help it, she giggled. Then she looked at Aaron.

“They’re cute.”

She couldn’t read his mood as he turned to her, and didn’t want to try right then. “Yeah,” he agreed. “They’re something else.” They brought her phone. She pulled on her clothes and followed the scent of coffee to the galley.

Graymard was happily surprised to hear from her. It turned out it was just a little after eight in the morning. “Well, that is good news.

They’re the most experienced crew we’re sending out. I’ll take care of contacting the other crews for you.” She stepped away from the men, out of the galley and into the common room, and dropped her voice. “Yeah, well, tell the assholes on the Kendall Kant and Braynow Gaston that they need to quit fucking around. The jerks on those two boats were laughing about these guys.”

His voice hardened. “Oh, were they?”

“Yeah. They were treating them like a joke.”

“Well, they are an unconventional crew, but that’s certainly no reason for the others to¯”

“It’s exactly why the others pick on them. I would be willing to bet all the demerits they’ve wracked up would be a result of being egged into something by a bunch of jerks.” Graymard was silent for a moment. Emi suspected she’d hit the nail on the head. “I’ll talk to them,” he assured her. “Now then, we need you all back here for crew pairing and paperwork. Preferably this morning.”

Her gut twisted as reality hit home. She was really doing this. “As far as I know, I’m sticking with these guys. But…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it.

She didn’t have to. “You will all get a final chance at the end of training to back out. Of course, you can always back out before then.” Relief. “Okay. Like I said, I don’t foresee any problems.” She hoped they wouldn’t back out.

Oh, God, what if they did?

“Understood. I’ll see you all here within the next two hours. The receptionist will direct you. Have fun, Emi.” Emi knew her heart had slipped as surely as the men’s had. The worry that they might reject her after all this was said and done gnawed at her. Could she take that? For the first time in ten years, it felt like she had a family again.

Forcing that down, she returned to the galley to eat.

The twins were good cooks. She felt absolutely spoiled, and they refused to let her help with clean-up. The men dressed, now in crew uniforms, and she realized she was still in her clothes from the day before. “We have to go by my place later so I can get my stuff.” Ford eyed her. “We don’t have any ladies’ clothes. Caph’s pants should fit you, they’ll be long on you. We can roll the legs up and find you a belt. Aaron’s shirts will easily fit you.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Unless you want to wear one of my shirts and torture us all day with how snug it’d be on you.” She grinned. “I wouldn’t want to be cruel. I can save those for when we’re here in the ship.”

The men laughed, and she followed them to the crew quarters to change.

“Think we’ll pass the other two crews when we go?” she asked as she stepped into Caph’s pants. Yes, they were big, but her shape was different than the guys and there was no way she’d fit into Aaron or Ford’s pants. “I’d love to flip them a bird. Assholes.” She looked up at her men. “This is so surreal. In a good way.” Ford rolled the cuffs up for her and handed her one of his belts.

“They look good on you, kiddo.”

Aaron handed her one of his shirts, a short-sleeved, collared pullover with the ship’s crest and name embroidered on the left chest.

“They’ll probably get you set up with uniforms today. They like us to do training as a matched set. Doesn’t matter here on the ship, but we try to follow as many rules as we can.” Her shoes didn’t exactly go with the ensemble, but the pants were so long they mostly hid them. Caph brought her a new toothbrush and hairbrush from storage. She brushed out her hair, pulling it back. As she did she noticed Aaron’s fleeting frown.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s prettier when you wear it down.” She’d pulled out her hair clip the night before during their poker game and wore it loose.

“Really?”

He nodded. “You’ll need to wear it up for some of the training, but…” He shrugged again.

She unclipped it, and all three men smiled. “Better?” she asked.

They nodded.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get the paperwork over with so we can have some fun.”

Emi knew from the personnel files that none of the men were empaths, natural or trained, so she didn’t have to carefully shield her thoughts or emotions from them. Good thing too, because she was nervous as hell. The morning had slipped past her, flying at light speed, it seemed. They all filled out forms¯paperwork, an old holdover term from when people actually used paper¯on electronic hand-helds they would use throughout training. When it came time to sync their chips they were led into a room with two dozen large reclining chairs.

A technician showed them to their seats and walked to a console as Graymard entered. They hadn’t seen much of him during the day.

“This won’t hurt, Emi. You won’t even know anything’s happened.”

“What exactly does it do?”

“It syncs you all together. It also lowers a few settings and allows for more freedom of interaction during intimacy.”

“That’s a polite way of saying we can get rough if I’m willing?” she asked.

Ford snickered. “Damn, girl. You’re gonna wear us out.” Graymard, however, nodded. “Exactly. It’s an intelligent chip and can sense if no really means yes or no, so to speak. It also allows you to home in on each other while aboard the ship, and to a certain extent over limited distances when you’re off-ship. You’re synced to the ship so you can find your way back when you leave it. This is all limited to within the crew, and to the ship. The only time you trigger outside tracking capabilities is if you enable the distress beacon or the ship is severely damaged or destroyed, which would activate the automatic alarm.”

He continued. “As the men already know, it also means none of you can willingly or voluntarily engage in intimate encounters with anyone outside of your matched crew. In the unlikely case something happens and one of you is forced, it will sense that and not activate. It is tuned to your biorhythms, as well as those of your crewmates, and it will prevent voluntary straying.” Emi smiled. “Absolutely?”

He nodded. “Without question.”

“Just out of curiosity, how does the chip ensure that?”

“Well, it has a corrective pulse. The first warning pulse, if you can call it that, isn’t uncomfortable. It’s more like a mental tapping reminding the person to stop. If their activity continues, the discomfort continues and increases.”

“What if someone didn’t stop?”

He frowned. “Well, theoretically it could potentially kill someone by damaging their brain stem if they didn’t stop their activity and the pulses continued for an extended period of time, but there’s never been a recorded case of that. It’s not possible. It would hurt too much.”

She froze. “How do you know it won’t misfire?”

“It can’t. Only voluntary violation will trigger it. There is no way for it to malfunction, because it self-polices. Any abnormalities and it shuts off and notifies the ship, us, and you as medical officer that there’s a problem. It has multiple fail-safes. We’ve used this model for three decades without problem. We have taken every precaution.

You will also have a kit on board to remove and replace chips in case there are any issues. They’re very easy to program, the kit will do it for you.”

Emi relaxed a little. “What else do they do?”

“They allow you as medical officer to monitor the crew with the computers, to a certain extent. You have empath training, so you’ll be able to fine-tune your senses, I’m sure, to your crew mates and sense any problems with their health. We’ll go through all of this in-depth with you, and there will be a full set of records on board for your reference. And as I mentioned before, it attunes you to each other so that while it’s impossible to force each other, it’s also very uncomfortable to let any crew member go without release if they’re in the mood and really desiring intimacy.”

“An anti-blue-balls feature,” Emi snarked. The men laughed again.

“Correct,” Graymard said. “But that also applies to you, as well.

There’s no set time frame. Again, it’s tapped into your particular biorhythms, whether you’re in the mood once a day or once a month.” She looked at her men, who watched her, smiles on their faces. “I don’t think I’ll have any problem with these three taking care of my needs.”

“Damn straight,” the twins said. Aaron grimaced.

“You got a setting in that thing to prevent that?” he grumped.

Emi laughed.

The technician looked up. “All done.” Graymard was right—she hadn’t felt a thing. Aaron took her hand when she stood, helped her to her feet.

“What’s next?” he asked Graymard, not releasing her, his thumb gently stroking her hand.

“Lunch, then an orientation for Emi, which you three need to sit in on.” Graymard looked at her clothes, apparently torn between amusement and disapproval at them taking the initiative to dress her in hand-me-downs. “Then you can take her by supply and get her whatever she requires there. I’ll leave word with them to totally outfit and equip her as needed, no limits.” She didn’t want to take off what she was wearing just yet. It was nice knowing all three of her men had contributed something to her ill-fitting couture. “I need to go by my apartment and storage locker and get my things.”

“You’ll have time later today. Go eat, and then the receptionist will direct you to the orientation.”

Emi wondered if she was coming down with a cold or something, because her sense of taste and smell still seemed out of whack, almost dulled. They ate together, then she snuggled, tucked comfortably between Aaron and Caph on one of the large leather sofas in the orientation room. Halfway through the first video, Caph swapped places with Ford, and Emi smiled and patted his…mmm…firm thigh.

Aaron never moved from her left side, their fingers laced together, his thumb idly stroking the back of her hand.

Usually training videos like that bored her to tears. But what seemed only minutes later it was over, and the technician was asking if she had any questions before starting the next. The videos were program overviews, how the fleet ranking hierarchy was established and her basic duties and responsibilities as medical officer¯she’d be a fully commissioned, ranking fleet officer¯the mission specifics to be detailed down the road. Three videos later, her men led Emi to supply to get her uniforms.

After a quick stop by the ship to drop everything off, they requisitioned a large box van from the motor pool.

“We won’t need anything this big,” she told Aaron as he climbed behind the wheel and indicated she should take shotgun.

Caph and Ford crammed into the back seat of the crew cab. She had a feeling, whether by silent captain decree or some mutual decision amongst the men, she would always get the shotgun seat next to Aaron.

“The pick-up trucks only seat three, might as well get everything in one trip. A car would be too small,” he explained.

“True.”

It took less than an hour with the men’s help to empty her dorm and the storage locker. Fortunately, Daniel didn’t put in one of his appearances. Donna wasn’t in, so Emi sent her an email promising to get together with her in the next few days. Unloading was easy, and they cooked dinner together. She still hadn’t changed her clothes, but she did switch to comfier sneakers.

“Did anyone think to get me bread crumbs, by the way?” Ford frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll have to keep sending out a search party to find me. I’ll need to leave a trail of bread crumbs so I don’t get lost in this place.” The men laughed. Aaron reassured her. “There are regularly spaced com pads all over the place. Find the nearest one, hit the button, it activates it and gives you a map on the screen.”

“Oh. That’s helpful.”

“You don’t think we really know this ship like the back of our hands yet, do you?” Caph asked.

She shrugged. “I assumed you did.”

“We’ve only had her eight months. We picked her up at the Mars DSMC base and brought her here when we signed on. They wanted us to have a shakedown cruise with her old crew before we hit dry dock, and didn’t want the post-refit maiden voyage to be our first on her,” Caph explained

“What did you have before?”

“Med-hev. Medium-heavy,” he clarified. “Larger than the geeks and grunts have now, though. Nearly as big as this girl.” He smirked.

“The grunts were forced to downsize from what they crewed on in the ISNC. They screamed bloody murder when they weren’t given the Bight.”

Which explained even more.

“Why do they use small crews on these ships?” she asked.

“The more people you have, the more resources you need to keep them alive. For what we’re doing, between cargo, supplies, science equipment, and weaponry resources, a trim crew is the best. Plus we’re set up with a jump engine in addition to the regular engines, so we need the extra space for it. The ships are equipped with multiple redundant back-ups. Let’s put it this way—if the ship totally goes offline, it means we’re pretty well fucked regardless, because some major shit’s happened to it. It’s not like in the old vids where the computers can maliciously take over, or one little short-circuit blows the bird up.”

She still felt nervous about going out in space, but these men had spent decades there and survived it just fine. “Is it going to be dangerous?”

The men watched her, but Aaron answered. “Frankly, probably less dangerous than settling down in a house in Old Phoenix and trying to drive to work every day and risking your life in traffic. For some of the explorations we’ll pick up military escorts, but even then that’s mostly just training for them, not actual protection for us. We’ll have a full range of weaponry. Where we’re slated to go are places already charted from a distance, but they haven’t been closely mapped or explored yet. Mostly unpopulated regions. They’re looking for new colony and outpost prospects.”

“So there’s always a risk?”

He leaned back, his voice softening. “There’s always a risk. Any day you wake up in the morning and get out of bed you take a risk.

There’s acceptable risk, and unacceptable risk. I will never knowingly put my crew in jeopardy. I damn well have a strong sense of self-preservation. Can accidents happen? Sure. Piracy is a possibility, but they won’t have near the weaponry we’ll have, and where we’re going, it’s never been reported. I’m not a daredevil, despite the reps we captains sometimes get. I just happen to love my job.” She nodded. “Okay then.” His soothing, calm confidence reassured her.

Dinner was excellent. The twins were great cooks. Hopefully they could teach her a thing or two.

After clean-up, Ford rubbed his hands together. “Want the full tour now?”

“I guess I should have asked for that first, but yeah.” Aaron glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a captain’s meeting in fifteen I can’t miss.” He stood, leaned over and kissed her, then each of the twins. “See you in a few hours.” She watched him leave and blushed when the twins noticed her expression.

“That doesn’t bother you, does it, sweetheart?” Ford asked.

Emi started breathing again. It had been a very sweet kiss, like a husband kissing his wife good-bye before going to work…and his husband…and his other husband. Matter-of-fact and brief, but tender.

She shook her head, smiling. “No, didn’t bother me, just sort of surprised me. Good surprise. I’ll get used to it.” Truth be told, she was wondering if she could coax the twins to bed.

The twins’ collective sigh of relief made her laugh. “I was worried for a second there, honey,” Caph admitted. “Afraid you’d freak out on us. Well, let’s get started. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” They showed her the rest of the immediate crew area, including the rec area with exercise equipment and an advanced sim room.

“We’ve got thousands of programs for it,” Ford explained, showing her the console. “Tons of on-Earth places, off-Earth, lots of different things. Make sure you look through the library before we leave. If there’s anything you want, requisition it. We have full access, so it’s not like it costs us anything.”

“Same with the books,” Caph added. “We’ve got a huge book, vid, and music library, but check it out and if there’s anything you want, we’ll get it. You can get put on subscription services too. When something comes out for keywords you specify, it’ll be waiting for us to upload it at whatever our next scheduled DSMC port is.” She shook her head, amazed. “Wow. I mean, it’s like a library at your fingertips.” She was used to good borrowing access because of the university, but not being able to basically own them and have full and unfettered access. “What about educational material?” Ford led the way past sick bay. “You’ll have the full and most up-to-date medical journals and diagnostic manuals when we leave, with automatic uploads at each DSMC base. Not just human, but known species, especially the treaty races.”

“I’ll be doing a lot of studying.”

They took her up to the bridge next, which was near crew quarters. “I’m going to be assigned watches, huh?” She stared at the nearly dizzying array of consoles, screens, controls, computers¯maybe she was in over her head.

Ford slipped his arm around her waist. “Don’t worry. It’s not nearly as complicated as it look.”

“I hope not.”

Caph pointed to one work station, surrounded by a curved console, with a large, comfortable-looking chair. “Captain’s chair. Or whoever’s on watch. Command console.” He waved her over and showed her one main console screen with several readouts highlighted in green. “This is the mini-brain, as we call it. It will tell you everything you need to worry about. There are pre-set alarms, so if something goes out of whack it’ll immediately set off the klaxon and we’ll all be here in thirty seconds or less, believe me.”

“I can’t break anything?”

He laughed. “No. Navigation is automatic unless overridden. If you’re doing a watch, it’ll be set on auto-pilot. Sensors will notify you if there’s any reason to change course. If so, it’ll either handle it, if it’s a minor adjustment like for a single object, or it’ll notify us if it’s an evasive action, like for an asteroid field. You basically sit up here and stay awake. Good time to catch up on your reading. Sometimes we’ll alternate, someone takes the first half of night watch, someone gets up early for the second half. Unless someone had too much coffee and can’t sleep.” He glared at Ford.

Ford shrugged. “I like my java. What can I say.” He winked at Emi. “We won’t leave you alone at first. We’ll partner up with you.

After a month or so, you’ll be an old hat at it.” They showed her the observation dome, a small armored bubble at the top of the ship, easily accessed from a ladder in the bridge. “This is usually shielded when we’re making jumps or under way, but you can see the whole top of the ship from there, great to check for any damage,” Caph explained, making room for her on the small platform.

There was enough room for all three of them to stand there and stare out the windows.

She looked out over the dry dock facility. The Kendall Kant and Braynow Gaston were clearly visible nearby. With the observation dome located near the ship’s bow, the Kendall Kant’s bridge was maybe ten yards away.

Ten minutes later, they threaded their way to cargo. It was huge, almost two hundred yards long and a hundred yards wide, nearly empty. “Where is everything?” Her voice echoed.

“They’ll start loading us once the retrofits are complete. Not too much down here now,” Ford explained.

The enormity of the situation loomed over her as large as the cavernous cargo hold. “How am I ever going to learn this?”

“Honey, I had no college training when I joined the double-M, neither did Caph. It was all OJT, as they say. On the job training. It’s a lot easier to teach someone this—” he waved his arm, indicating the ship, “—stuff than it is what you can do. I promise, in six months you’ll be completely comfortable. They don’t expect you to be as up to speed on the ship as Aaron or us. Your primary job is to keep us morons alive.” He smiled, and she relaxed.

“Thanks.”

“It’s the truth. That’s why they’re so far behind launching new missions. There’s a few med officers contracted to join once they finish college, but it’s hard to find a good crew pairing. This was like fate, meeting you. Seriously.”

The tour continued, some of the areas not yet complete where labs would be located. Then another large, unfinished room. “This is going to be the hydro lab,” Caph said.

“Hydro?”

“Hydroponics. So we can have at least a few fresh fruits and veggies,” Ford volunteered.

“A garden?”

“Sort of,” they parroted, then laughed.

She loved it when they did that.

“My parents used to have a garden when we still had a house.” She didn’t like to talk about them much, thinking about their death still hurt, even this many years later. “I used to love that.” The twins grinned. “You want to take charge of it?” Ford asked.

“I was going to try it, but last time I tried plants, I killed them. Maybe you’d have better luck than me.”

Caph rolled his eyes. “He ain’t exaggerating. Less than a week, everything was dead.”

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

They returned to the crew area nearly an hour later, with only part of the tour complete. She felt tired and wanted to lie down. The day blurred in her mind. She meant to close her eyes only for a moment, but when she awoke, Aaron was leaning over, kissing her.

“Hey,” he whispered.

She looked around. The twins were asleep, the vid screen on and tuned to a local TV station, the volume down low.

“Hey.” One thing she would ask for was a wall clock, or maybe a window sim screen. She wasn’t used to not being able to sense the time. “What time is it?”

“After ten. I’ve been back for a while but didn’t want to wake you guys. I had to take care of some paperwork.” He quietly undressed and slipped into bed next to her, curling around her.

She snuggled against him, amazed how comfortable it felt being with these men. Ford and Caph both wore sleeping shorts, Ford’s arm slung over Caph’s broad chest. They looked so perfect like that, like they belonged there.

“They’re so cute,” she whispered.

He kissed the back of her neck. “They are. Told you we’re not always sex maniacs.”

She stifled her laughter and closed her eyes, wondering if she’d sleep as well that night as she had the night before.